"In the United States, Mother's Day is always celebrated on the second Sunday in May. Many other countries such as Denmark, Finland, Italy, Turkey, Australia and Belgium also celebrate Mother's Day on the same day as the United States. England, however, celebrates Mother's Day on the fourth Sunday of Lent, and in Argentina it is the second Sunday in October. International Mother's Day is actually celebrated on May 11."

(Source:  Kimberly Powell, "Mother's Day Around the World-History, Genealogy & Famous Moms," About.com; http://genealogy.about.com/cs/holidays/a/mothers_day.htm .)

"Today's topic, though, is how "working" mothers and stay-at-home moms rate their harried existences. According to a survey by a group called ClubMom, only 8 percent of the wage earners would work full time if money were no object.

A majority of 'working' mothers say their children fare as well as those with stay-at-home mothers. But a majority of stay-at-home moms disagree.

And while 60 percent of employed mothers gave themselves an A on their out-of-home jobs, just 45 percent rated their maternal deeds so highly.

Spreadsheets, apparently, are easier to figure than teenagers."

(Source:  Hubert B. Herring, "What, Exactly, Is a 'Nonworking' Mother, Anyway?" The New York Times, May 8, 2005; http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/business/yourmoney/08count.html?oref=login .)

 Some sociologists believe that maternal employment represents a plus for daughters, giving them a "positive"" role model for female self-reliance. Yet Jacqueline Scott of the University of Cambridge discovered in a study of British families that maternal employment did not deliver the goods to daughters when it comes to educational achievement that she had anticipated.

Crunching data from the 1994 through 1999 versions of the British Household Panel Study, an annual survey of 5,000 households, the professor of social and political science examined how family structure, parental education, maternal employment, parenting practices, and youth characteristics related to educational achievement. That achievement was measured by two variables: the attainment, at age 16, of at least five "passes" on the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GSCE) and, at age 19, of at least two A-level passes.

As Scott expected, family structure was significantly related to educational attainment, as adolescents who grew up in households with both biological parents were more than twice as likely to achieve the five passes on the GSCE as well as the two A-level passes than their peers from other households, including single or stepfamily situations (Odds Ratio 2.09, p<.001 for GSCE; Odds Ratio 2.29, p<.001 for A-level).

Findings related to maternal employment, however, was not what she fully expected. Children, and especially boys, whose mothers worked full-time (at least 30 hours per week) when they were 11 to 15 were less likely to attain five or more GCSE passes at age 16 than children with stay-at-home mothers (Odds Ratio .37, p<.01). However, full-time maternal employment yielded a positive effect upon girls--but not boys-at the A-level, although this effect lost its statistical significance in multivariate analysis that controlled for factors such as family income, parental education, and home ownership. Scott also found that part-time maternal employment did not hurt but enhanced educational attainment on the GSCE, especially among daughters, but the effects were not statistically significant.

Scott suggests that these effects of maternal employment on the academic achievement of girls, limited as they are, nonetheless reflect a trend. But she fails to ponder what these correlations might mean-even if they were statistically significant-in light of her very clear finding that girls are more than twice as likely as boys to succeed academically (p<.05 at both levels; Odds Ratios 2.15 for GCSE and 2.01 for A-level). If she did, perhaps she would issue a call, in keeping with her devotion to equality, for more mothers to stay at home in order to boost their sons academic pursuits and therefore help close this gender achievement gap.